Hillsburn bringing new album to Glasgow Square stage

Hillsburn has spent the last few years figuring out their sound, and with their latest album The Wilder Beyond, singer Rosanna Burrill believes they’ve found it.

Released earlier this month, the Nova Scotian indie rock band brings the album, produced and recorded by the band in singer and songwriter Paul Aarntzen’s apartment, to Glasgow Square on February 24.

“I think our sound turned into what Hillsburn now is through the recording of the album. It was nice to be able to follow the path of the idea without feeling like you really had only two hours in the studio. It allowed us to let the album be whatever it was going to be,” Burrill said.

Producing the album themselves wasn’t something the five-person group — comprised of Burrill, Aarntzen, Clare Macdonald, Jackson Fairfax-Perry, and Clayton Burrill — consciously set out to do, she said, instead beginning as an experiment.

“Honestly, we knew we needed to make a new album and we didn’t have any money,” Burrill said, adding they recorded one song to find out if it would be possible to do without a studio.

“We realized after having done that, that it was actually going to be a great option.”

It offered them more control and time, with Aarntzen learning along the way how to engineer and mix the album.

“It was pretty incredible what he was able to learn how to do it in the time we recorded the album,” she said, praising his ability to learn new things.

Burrill said the band originally fell into the folk category by accident, recording their first album In The Battle Years in a home in Hillsburn, N.S. using instruments like acoustic guitar and mandolin because they were on hand.

Macdonald, their drummer, joined after the first album, released in March 2016, was done, which meant adding more percussion to their live show. Since then, she said they’ve been “evolving one piece at a time” and she credits Macdonald as “the catalyst for leaning more into the rock genre.”

Burrill said the response to the new album has been great with “more love and support than we thought was possible for a band our size.” She added it’s nice to see their fan base grow and support their new songs.

“You kinda go out on a limb when you change your sound. You don’t know if people are going to like it.”